Rich nations on track to raise $100 billion climate funds

Developed countries have said that this year, for the first time, they are expecting to meet the goal of jointly mobilising $100 billion to help climatechange mitigation action by developing nations.

While the resources had to be generated annually from 2020 itself, the rich nations have so far failed to raise the funds. But at the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors here, they have indicated that they are on course to meet the target in 2023 — a position that was taken note of in the ‘outcome document and chair’s summary’, which also backed a reform of multi-lateral development banks.

The reforms are meant toboost the funds available to meet “global challenges”, such as climate change, while retaining the focus on meeting sustainable development goals.

With the conflict in Ukraine splitting developed countries and Russia and China, the members settled for a chair’s summary with some of them flagging concerns over Moscow’s decision to block the flow of grains from Ukraine to Africa and West Asia.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the language describing the war had been drawn directly from last year’s G20 leaders’ summit declaration. “We don’t have the mandate to change that,” she told at the closing press conference as she counted several gains from the deliberations that “stretched” late into a “couple of nights” as China sought to block an agreementon addressing the debt concerns of several countries by working in tandem with IMF and

World Bank. The last leg of talks on the chair’s summary, which began on Monday morning went on till around 4 pm on Tuesday, as the Indian team led by economic affairs secretary Ajay Seth sought to build consensus. On Tuesday, Sitharaman also met her Chinese counterpart Liu Kun and the debt crisis was one of the issues that were discussed.

On the issue of resources to deal with climate change, the outcome document referred to the need for advanced countries to begin a review to raise the annual mobilisation to beyond $100 billion from 2025.

The developing countries, which are blamed for the current level of emissions, have often said that the developed world has not done its but to help them transition to a low-carbon economy and initiate other measures to combat the climate crisis.

“The Indian presidency received a lot of support on all the agenda items,” Sitharaman said, while listing out several areas of focus. There were, however, concerns over the global economic situation, given the uncertainty, uneven growth and the G20 FMs and central bank governors called for a calibrated fiscal andmonetary policy reform.